Today Ed Brayton (fellow Scibling at Dispatches From the Culture Wars) is reporting in the Michigan Messenger that the mercenary company Blackwater may face federal weapons charges for “illegally stockpiling automatic weapons” at one of their US facilities. Given the slate of bad news piling on for Blackwater, I was amused to find this 2007 advertisement discovered by Zero Anthropology.

Another of the private mercenary companies, and one that was rejected by the International Peace Operations Association, was the British firm Aegis Defense Services. In 2005 a “trophy” video was posted by a disaffected employee on an Aegis website. The video shows mercenaries randomly shooting vehicles in Iraq while Elvis Presley’s “Midnight Train” plays in the background. The Pentagon reportedly investigated the case and took no action since private contractors are exempt from both US military rules of engagement and Iraqi law.